5.10.2013

Much Ado

Poetry must be nothing, for it must be beautifulAnd if beauty is anything, it is nothing at allA chance of values to stir strained nervesA calculus we choose of just-proportioned curves

I mean, wait.It can be abrupt, it can disrupt - it can summon hateBut it must be beautiful in all and every way.

If beauty be not discretion but discretion be a noseIn its small expression you scent where beauty goesIt goes where! Everywhere this the poet seesIt is certainly not fair, the metaphor mind frees

If there is something we love, we make it lovelierBy carrying it above our affections we must averIt is a practical consideration, about both great and smallOf joy and consternation, of man and woman all;

So even life's small evils - even ideology's own sinsIts dark light then reveals, wearing gilded skinsWe find ourselves like Balaam, quite unable just to curseAnd even curses can just make the hexing worse;

If some are unredeemable, whether they will be redeemedPoetry's just unseemable, it must be then unseamedA flight from beauty does it, for then it cannot blessAnd can find those to curse it, and curse it can no less;

For to some it is unthinkable that suffering must yet persistIt is a draught undrinkable, and must soon cease to existAnd poetry they thought, while not excusing their own sinsMust eventually be fought, or real suffering still wins

But silly men have always, always played the foolUseful in their own ways, but more often just a toolBut to the poet they are colored in the villain's blacks and graysAs sharp as any dullard, they brighten still the days

The days when man's spirit can find a voice to singNo enemy can come near it, no matter what he bringAnd perhaps for just a moment, upon the stage of EarthHe catches in the present, God's chagrin and his mirth.

To post-scriptOur advice, is but twice, from those pages rippedReformed for your leisure, now my pleasureIs to keep myself tight-lipped!

Seismographic Radar

A Poem

Is a curious device which is not unlike a part of an unknown whole; or as if a watchmaker had inspiration to make all of the parts of the watch before knowing either what it was or that he was a watchmaker at all.

It speaks to and from that mode of thinking which is almost purely masculine; it is not unlike music but is not music, it is the cousin of music and its companion. It has a tripartite nature like music in rhythm, rhymes and narrative.

It is almost pure play, and so is accused of mere cleverness or frivolity, but it is also in deadly earnest. In this way, it is like a play of masks or a pageant, but it must be kept with an eye that sees beyond the device itself.

It is an object both of time and space; the mystery of representation and symbol that is in art and music finds its truest expression here. It is still and yet moves, if it is ugly it is instead grotesque, it shocks and appalls the earthly senses, but the incision is clean; the heart is pulled free if but for a moment to ascertain what is really there.

A Purpose

To call to mind that which persists through the flux of time in bright relief of silver and gold -- as it was of old.